Title: The Drama of the DeadAuthor: GabriellePairing: Spike/Buffy Rating: FRT/PGWord Count: 241Summary: *Set in Season 6* Spike is alone - and lonely - and he wonders what a certain someone would think about the way things are now.Feedback: Please.Distribution: My LJ and my site only.Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to Joss and a bunch of other people who are not now and have never been me.Author's Notes: This piece uses the prompt "Joyce Summers" from sb_fag_ends.

The Drama of the Dead

Sometimes when he’s alone – when Buffy’s gone and the scents of sex and Slayer are all that remain to warm his bed – he wonders what she’d think. Not that he isn’t pretty sure he knows. He can see her, that look of parental concern and disapproval – the one that was always somehow warm even if it was coldly condemnatory – holding back a cup of rapidly cooling cocoa and asking him just what his intentions are. But it’s her daughter who needs that question posed. Who needs a box of the ears, or whatever modern parents in an age of visiting social workers and other busybodies use as a substitute, and a stern talking-to about leading blokes on and abusing their feelings.

She’d give it to her eldest with both barrels, though, if she knew. Or maybe that’s just his fancy, warmed in his cold heart by the memory of melting marshmallows and an ear so sympathetic you wonder if it truly knew the voice to which it listened belonged to a soulless demon. Buffy knows – never forgets – and while she gives him her body, she doesn’t open up to him, trust him with herself… not the way…

Oh how he wishes she were here. She could fix this. She could. She’s the only one.

He’s alone though. All alone. There’s no Buffy… and there’s no Joyce.

When he cries, he counts the tears. Which one, he wonders, claims the lion’s share?

Spike's quite right that Buffy needed more motherly direction with all the hard stuff in her life. His loss may not be a great as hers, but it's got to be a huge hole for him that one of the few who treated him without rancor is gone forever.